Free Play Holes

A hole in the playfield that delivers the ball back to the ball-lift mechanism rather than ending it, effectively giving the player an extra shot without subtracting from the balls remaining in the game. The ball enters the hole and, instead of being captured or ejected to a new position, is quietly returned to the plunger lane for another launch. Free play holes appeared on early pinball machines from the 1930s and 1940s — cataloged on over 50 IPDB machines — as a reward mechanism that extended game time, a precursor to the extra-ball awards that would later become standard in flipper-era pinball.